<i>In 2006, if I saw 100,000 shares of AMD offered, and I wanted it, I could go out and buy it. It was a simple as that. In 2007, if I tried to buy 100,000 shares, I would get 80,000. Then in 2008 I would get 60,000. The market is showing me a volume at a price that I can no longer buy or sell at. I can’t buy or sell what I see on my screen.</i><p>Another way to put this:<p>"Once upon a time, I was paid a fortune by a giant investment bank to move large blocks of stock on behalf of their spectacularly wealthy clients. As recently as 2006, if one of those clients needed me to move a block of 100,000 shares, I could do that at literally the click of a button. This despite the fact that I earned a commission on the trade; it must have been a very expensive button my bank owned! And this despite the fact that my 100,000 share order was bound to move the market, and so I was in effect acting on inside information. But that's just how this is supposed to work, right?<p>"Anyways, the markets evolved, and my giant investment bank could no longer earn massive commissions just by pushing a single button. Even though I knew my giant hedge fund clients were going to dump vast numbers of shares on the market, depressing prices for all the other investors, the markets no longer allowed me to trivially profit from that information! My 100,000 share orders get broken into small numbers of lots just like everyone else's. No fair!"<p>"So I started a new exchange to rewind the markets back to the glorious, equitable, fair, transparent days of 2006."